The Rolling Stones drew nearly 40,000 in 1975, but whether events like it can or should be replicated has made for decades of discussion.

Apr. 13, 2013

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The Rolling Stones performed at Hughes Stadium on July 20, 1975. The Coloradoan published this aerial view of the stadium, holding nearly 40,000 people, the next day.

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Our interactive timeline of Hughes Stadium concerts features video from the Rolling Stones’ and Bob Dylan’s 1970s concerts. Click on http:// noconow.co/hughestimeline to find the timeline and a photo gallery.

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A major Fort Collins concert venue that once hosted the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and the Beach Boys is potentially back open for business, but there’s little evidence CSU plans to throw open the gates to Hughes Stadium again anytime soon.

A 1975 Rolling Stones concert alone drew nearly 40,000 fans, who were also treated to a surprise appearance by Elton John. Chicago and the Beach Boys played here. And in 1976, Bob Dylan played before 25,000 fans as part of the Rolling Thunder Revue.

“The energy level was off the charts,” said Mims Harris, a retired Colorado State University campus events director who helped stage the shows. “It was extraordinary. It was fabulous.”

But following a legal dispute with nearby residents and the forced replacement of the Hughes Field turf following the Dylan show, CSU halted the concerts. Fort Collins has seen no single-day concert event of their magnitude since.

For the past several years, however, university officials have quietly met among themselves and with city leaders to discuss bringing concerts back to Hughes. Those conversations, however, have stalled as university leaders focus on their efforts to build a new on-campus football stadium.

Critics of the proposed new stadium say there’s a direct connection between the loss of momentum for Hughes concerts and the emphasis on building an on-campus replacement. They say CSU is deliberately avoiding holding concerts at Hughes because officials don’t want neighbors to realize how big, loud and busy a venue drawing 40,000 people to Fort Collins could be.

CSU officials say otherwise. They say they’d love to host a major concert at Hughes if they could make the finances work. But a major show could cost its hosts about $2 million in up-front artist guarantees.

“It’s been a hard nut to crack, no doubt about it,” said Lance Wright, CSU’s director of campus activities. “I would love to see U2 at Hughes. And we just can’t afford that.”

Wright is responsible for organizing the return-to-school concerts annually held on the main campus. Those concerts typically draw about 6,000 fans. Hughes Stadium seats 32,500 but has held far more.

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The story of how Hughes briefly became a major American concert venue starts with one man: Barry Fey.

Fey, a legendary rock promoter based in Denver, was working with the Rolling Stones in 1969 for their first American tour in years. The band, coming off a series of drug-related legal clashes, was reluctant to play in Boulder or Denver for their inaugural date, Fey said.

Familiar with Fort Collins, he suggested the band open the tour at what was then called Moby Gym.

“They said ‘Fort What?’” Fey said. “That tied me to the Stones and to Fort Collins because it was the best show on the tour.”

Fey teamed with CSU for dozens of other shows at Moby, and eventually decided to see about pulling off a much bigger concert at Hughes Stadium, then just 3 years old. And in the summer of 1975, Chicago and the Beach Boys played the first show at the stadium, followed two weeks later by the Rolling Stones. Nearly 40,000 people packed into Hughes for the Stones show, which also featured a surprise appearance by Elton John and Charlie Daniels.

“I don’t suspect that any college in the country had two Stones shows. You were very lucky,” Fey said.

Harris, then helping run CSU’s campus activities, worked closely with Fey to stage the shows. She said they were huge endeavors that gave student workers an up-close look at how major concerts ran. As part of the deal, Fey put up all the money to stage the shows, and then shared profits with CSU. The university netted just more than $77,000 — equivalent to more than $332,000 today — from those two 1975 summer shows. Student tickets started at $7.

Memories of that Stones show are particularly strong for those who attended. Steve McMurry and Jackie Pullin Ricketts said they both remember the huge crowds and excitement filling the city, with fans camping out and partying before the show.

“The Stones flew in on a helicopter, and as they took the stage, Mick asked the crowd ‘Where the f--- are we?’ ” McMurry said.

Only one more major concert was held at Hughes: Bob Dylan recorded most of his “Hard Rain” live album during a May 23, 1976, Hughes appearance that followed days of pouring rain. Harris said she had expected no one to show to Rolling Thunder Revue show due to the weather. But 25,000 people did, destroying the stadium’s sodden turf as they enjoyed the music. Fey paid to replace the grass, but the damage had been done in more than one way.

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The previous summer, nearby residents began complaining to CSU that the concerts were too noisy and causing trash and trespassing problems on their property. At one point, the head of the three-family Miller clan threatened to meet trespassers at his fence with automatic rifles, according to news coverage at the time.

The Miller family never resorted to violence. Instead, they turned to the courts. Following a monthslong process, a judge limited concert noise to no more than 80 decibels at the Millers’ property line. That’s a level concert promoters said was effectively too low to stage an open-air concert at Hughes. And so on the day the judge granted the injunction — Jan. 30, 1978 — the music died at Hughes.

“We had this great thing going,” Harris recalled, her voice trailing off. “We had this great place for it.”

Years passed. Generations of students arrived in Fort Collins, attended CSU and graduated. The era of arena shows waned as big acts scaled back or broke up, replaced in part by smaller-drawing groups.

But CSU officials never forgot what those concerts at Hughes were like.

And in September 2009, CSU’s attorneys persuaded the Millers to agree to two test concerts at Hughes Stadium. The specific terms of the deal remain secret, although they include the requirement that an independent third party monitor the noise levels.

As the ink dried on the judge’s order temporarily lifting the concert ban, CSU officials began meeting to discuss how to proceed. They quickly realized they lacked many of the components necessary to put on a major concert, including the money needed to bring in a major artist.

Performers who can fill Hughes would likely require guarantees of at $1 million, Wright said. He said CSU isn’t in a place where it can afford to pay that up front. He said the other option would be to work with a promoter like the now-retired Fey, but that would force CSU to give up a great deal of control over who came, when the show was, and even how much student tickets would cost.

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“I think we’ll continue to talk — what would it take, how do we explore it?” Wright said. “Fort Collins has grown and changed, but I don’t know how much we have the culture of paying $130 for a concert ticket in Fort Collins. You’ve got to make the money work.”

Among those who participated in the meetings about bringing concerts back to Hughes was Eric Berlinberg, the student body president in 2011. Berlinberg said everything started to feel like it was falling into place. And then CSU, he said, appeared to lose interest.

“I kept trying to move it forward, and it seemed like nobody wanted to hear it,” he said. “My perception is that Hughes ... became a black sheep.”

Berlinberg said he still doesn’t understand why CSU apparently lost interest. He acknowledged there are multiple challenges to staging a show at Hughes, but he said all of the problems were overcome in the 1970s and could be again.

Fort Collins resident Bob Vangermeersch says it’s not a coincidence CSU backed away from Hughes a few months before administrators announced dreams for a new on-campus football stadium. He said the university seems to be taking the approach of letting “the sleeping dog lie.”

Vangermeersch helped found the “Save Our Stadium Hughes” group dedicated to opposing a new on-campus football stadium. He argues CSU doesn’t want residents who live near campus to realize the impact that 40,000 fans would have on their neighborhoods, something they’d only discover if a similarly sized show were staged at Hughes.

He added: “Due to the proximity of the new stadium to residential areas, I believe that the noise and lights will become a much larger concern than traffic. Also, safety has got to be a large concern if 20,000 to 30,000 concert fans dump out into the campus and local community.”

Vangermeersch has repeatedly criticized CSU’s financial projections for the proposed stadium. He said there’s no way the university can afford to build it unless it can get additional revenue from renting out the space outside of football season.

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“Concerts may be a necessary evil around that neighborhood,” he said.

CSU spokesman Mike Hooker said the university remains committed to building both a multiuse on-campus stadium and using Hughes for events when the stars align.

“It makes a great conspiracy theory, but the reality is that there is zero connection — absolutely none — between the lack of concerts at Hughes and the effort to build an on-campus stadium,” he said.

Some live music enthusiasts in Fort Collins love the idea of Hughes concerts. Dani Grant, who owns the Mishawaka Ampitheatre, said concerts at Hughes could be “super fun” if done right.

She said organizing such a massive single-day event would require significant coordination with police, city staff, university workers and neighbors. She said it’s unclear what kind of band would be willing to play Hughes, and it’s unclear whether the city has enough hotel rooms to serve that many out-of-town guests.

“It’s a really interesting conversation to have,” she said. “And I’d love to be at the table for that conversation.”

Wright said CSU remains committed to continuing those conversations. He said with so many variables, it might make sense to turn over the entire effort to a promoter like Fey.

“Fort Collins has changed in a way that you’d think it would be easier to do a show. Just sheer population numbers, right? But the industry has changed ... there aren’t a lot of bands that do a lot of stadium shows these days,” Wright said.

Like Grant and Wright, Berlinberg said he hopes CSU keeps pursuing the idea of Hughes concerts. He said the past concerts helped define the CSU experience for those who were there, and a new series would engage students in a way nothing else could.

“If CSU were able to hold a concert at Hughes Stadium, that would be the moment that students who are in classes would remember for their rest of their lives,” Berlinberg said. “It really could define a generation’s experience on campus.”